Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Hanna and the Middle Way

Hanna Hirsch-Pauli (1864-1940) was a Swedish painter who studied in both Sweden and France, and who worked in the juste milieu style. This "middle way" style was thought to reconcile Classicism and Romanticism, or to fall somewhere in between Impressionist artists like Monet and such Pompier artists as Bouguereau. Not avante-garde but modern nonetheless.

Hanna, then Hanna Hirsch, studied in Paris from 1885 through 1887, sharing a studio with her friend the artist Eva Bonnier. Her painting of the Finnish artist Venny Soldan was accepted into the Paris Salon of 1887. It was extremely unconventional for the time, showing her friend seated on the floor, at work on a sculpture with clay on her hands, rather than in more proper bourgeois portrait pose.

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Welcome!

Women in the Act of Painting is an ever-growing collection of fine art images that depict women in the act of making visual art: painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking etc. Images by male artists are included, as are pieces of art that depict men as well as women, however, one of the main characters in the piece is always a woman in the act of making art. This is not simply a portrait or self-portrait collection, each piece shows the artist in the very act of making art or else with the tools of her craft close to hand.

My intention is to educate myself and others about women's presence in the history of art, to explore and present a fuller history, one that does not leave out more than fifty percent of the population.